THE STORY: George, a professor at a small college, and his wife, Martha, have just returned home, drunk from a Saturday night party. Martha announces, amidst general profanity, that she has invited a young couple--an opportunistic new professor at t

Edward Albee, perhaps best known for his acclaimed and infamous 1960s drama Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is one of America's greatest living playwrights. Now in his seventies, he is still writing challenging, award-winning dramas. This collection of essays on Albee, which includes contributions from the leading commentators on Albee's work, brings fresh critical insights to bear by exploring the full scope of the playwright's career, from his 1959 breakthrough with The Zoo Story to his recent Broadway success, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (2002). The contributors include scholars of both theatre and English literature, and the essays thus consider the plays both as literary texts and as performed drama. The collection considers a number of Albee's lesser-known and neglected works, provides a comprehensive introduction and overview, and includes an exclusive, original interview with Mr Albee, on topics spanning his whole career.

In 1960, Edward Albee electrified the theater world with the American premiere of The Zoo Story, and followed it two years later with his extraordinary first Broadway play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Proclaimed as the playwright of his generation, he went on to win three Pulitzer Prizes for his searing and innovative plays. Mel Gussow, author, critic, and cultural writer for The New York Times, has known Albee and followed his career since its inception, and in this fascinating biography he creates a compelling firsthand portrait of a complex genius. The book describes Albee's life as the adopted child of rich, unloving parents and covers the highs and lows of his career. A core myth of Albee's life, perpetuated by the playwright, is that The Zoo Story was his first play, written as a thirtieth birthday present to himself. As Gussow relates, Albee has been writing since adolescence, and through close analysis the author traces the genesis of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Tiny Alice, A Delicate Balance, and other plays. After his early triumphs, Albee endured years of critical neglect and public disfavor. Overcoming artistic and personal difficulties, he returned in 1994 with Three Tall Women. In this prizewinning play he came to terms with the towering figure of his mother, the woman who dominated so much of his early life. With frankness and critical acumen, and drawing on extensive conversations with the playwright, Gussow offers fresh insights into Albee's life. At the same time he provides vivid portraits of Albee's relationships with the people who have been closest to him, including William Flanagan (his first mentor), Thornton Wilder, Richard Barr, John Steinbeck, Alan Schneider, John Gielgud, and his leading ladies, Uta Hagen, Colleen Dewhurst, Irene Worth, Myra Carter, Elaine Stritch, Marian Seldes, and Maggie Smith. And then there are, most famously, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who starred in Mike Nichols's acclaimed film version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The book places Albee in context as a playwright who inspired writers as diverse as John Guare and Sam Shepard, and as a teacher and champion of human rights. Edward Albee: A Singular Journey is rich with colorful details about this uniquely American life. It also contains previously unpublished photographs and letters from and to Albee. It is the essential book about one of the major artists of the American theater.

The proliferation of Virginia Woolfs in both high and popular culture, she argues, has transformed the writer into a "star" whose image and authority are persistently claimed or challenged in debates about art, politics, gender, the canon, class, feminism, and fashion."--BOOK JACKET.

TEXT 12 brings a substantial focus on international perspectives on textual theory and practice, with essays including Pierre-Marc De Biasi's examination of the questions surrounding manuscript editions, "Editing Manuscripts: Toward a Typology of Recent French Genetic Editions, 1980-1995" and Alberto Varvaro's "The 'New Philology' from the Italian Perspective" as well as Bodo Plachta's discussion of questions in German scholarly editing. Other highlights include Kathryn Sutherland's investigation of the importance of punctuation to meaning, using Jane Austen's Mansfield Park as a case study and Andrew Durking's exploration "The Self-Playing Piano as a Site for Textual Criticism." Review essays and book reviews in this volume take on recent contributions to the textual and editorial scholarship of Yeats, Shakespeare, and Dickinson, among others. W. Speed Hill is Professor of English, Lehman College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Edward M. Burns is Professor of English, William Patterson College. Peter Shillingsburg is Associate Director of Graduate Studies and Research, Lamar University. TEXT 12 brings a substantial focus on international perspectives on textual theory and practice, with essays including Pierre-Marc De Biasi's examination of the questions surrounding manuscript editions, "Editing Manuscripts: Toward a Typology of Recent French Genetic Editions, 1980-1995" and Alberto Varvaro's "The 'New Philology' from the Italian Perspective" as well as Bodo Plachta's discussion of questions in German scholarly editing. Other highlights include Kathryn Sutherland's investigation of the importance of punctuation to meaning, using Jane Austen's Mansfield Park as a case study and Andrew Durking's exploration "The Self-Playing Piano as a Site for Textual Criticism." Review essays and book reviews in this volume take on recent contributions to the textual and editorial scholarship of Yeats, Shakespeare, and Dickinson, among others. W. Speed Hill is Professor of English, Lehman College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Edward M. Burns is Professor of English, William Patterson College. Peter Shillingsburg is Associate Director of Graduate Studies and Research, Lamar University.

The aim of this book is to explore the phenomenon of the electrified voice through interdisciplinary approaches such as media and technology studies, social history, and comparative cultural studies. The book focuses on three problem clusters: reflections on the societal level about the task of electronic voice transmission; the mediation of gender- and occupation-specific vocal stereotypes in audio and audio-visual formats; and the genesis of such vocal stereotypes in national radio and film cultures. Such a historicizing approach to societal experience in the field of voice mediation, including the use and interpretation of voice media, is today of great relevance in light of the collective learning processes currently triggered by rapid advances in technology.

As readers, we seem to be increasingly fascinated by studies of individual lives. In this timely, unusual and exhilarating collection Hermione Lee is concerned in different ways with approaches to 'life-writing': the relation of biography to fiction and history; the exploration of writers' lives in connection with their works; the new and changing ways in which biographies, memoirs, diaries and autobiographies can be discussed. As the title suggests, she also unravels the complex links between physical, sensual details and the 'body' of a work. 'Shelley's Heart and Pepys' Lobsters', for example, deals with myths, contested objects and things that go missing, while 'Jane Austen Faints' takes five varied accounts of the same dramatic moment to ask how biography deals with the private lives of famous women, a theme taken up in 'Virginia Woolf's Nose', on the way that the author's life-stories have been transformed into fiction and film. Rich, diverting and entertaining, these brilliant studies by a leading critic and internationally acclaimed biographer raise profound and intriguing issues about every aspect of writing, and reading, a life.

One of our most important cultural critics, at the top of her form, comments on a wide range of topics in both general and academic culture. In Loaded Words the inimitable literary and cultural critic Marjorie Garber invites readers to join her in a rigorous and exuberant exploration of language. What links the pieces included in this vibrant new collection is the author's contention that all words are inescapably loaded-that is, highly charged, explosive, substantial, intoxicating, fruitful, and overbrimming-and that such loading is what makes language matter. Garber casts her keen eye on terms from knowledge, belief, madness, interruption, genius, and celebrity to humanities, general education, and academia. Included here are an array of stirring essays, from the title piece, with its demonstration of the importance of language to our thinking about the world; to the superb "Mad Lib," on the concept of madness from Mad magazine to debates between Foucault and Derrida; to pieces on Shakespeare, "the most culturally loaded name of our time," and the Renaissance. With its wide range of cultural references and engaging style coupled with fresh intellectual inquiry, Loaded Words will draw in and enchant scholars, students, and general readers alike.

Reader's Guide Literature in English provides expert guidance to, and critical analysis of, the vast number of books available within the subject of English literature, from Anglo-Saxon times to the current American, British and Commonwealth scene. It is designed to help students, teachers and librarians choose the most appropriate books for research and study.

Now in a revised edition, this book is the only published study devoted to Larry Cohen and his significance as a great American filmmaker. The first edition is long out of print and often sought after. This edition covers all the director’s films, television work and screenplays, and contains an updated interview with the director as well as interviews with his colleagues Janelle Webb Cohen, Michael Moriarty and James Dixon. The filmography and bibliography are also updated.